Heat the oven to 480 degrees F. Pat the chicken dry inside and out (if you want an extra crispy skin, leave the raw chicken in the fridge uncovered overnight after you've patted it dry and then bring it to room temperature).

Put the chicken on a board or a large platter and generously season the inside of the bird with salt and pepper if you're using it. Drizzle a little olive oil in the cavity as well.

Drizzle the rest of the oil over the chicken, and rub it all over so that it's evenly coated. Salt the chicken well all over, making sure to get into all the nooks and crannies.

Transfer the chicken to an enameled cast iron pan or a heavy roasting pan just big enough to hold it and put it in the oven. Don't open the door for at least 45 minutes, when you can start to test it for doneness. (The chicken is cooked when you pierce the thickest part of the thigh with a sharp knife, and the juices run clear.) Let the chicken rest on a carving board while you make the pan sauce.

To make the sauce, put the roasting pan on the stove over medium-high heat. Add the butter to the drippings in the pan, and once it melts add the thyme and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, for about a minute.

Add the wine to the pan and scrape up all the brown bits with a wooden spoon, stirring them into the sauce. Let the wine cook down for one to two minutes.

Add a cup of boiling water, stir well, and let the sauce reduce for about 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt if necessary (if you've salted your chicken enough, this probably won't be necessary).

Cut the chicken into pieces and serve with the warm pan sauce in a bowl nearby for dipping.

Merrill -- I ended up using my cast iron skillet and it turned out really well. I even gambled on the pan sauce, which didn't taste metallic or damage the pan. In the future I'll probably use my enameled cast iron, but this worked out much better than expected. I stuffed the cavity with fennel fronds, and I rested the chicken atop sweet potato rounds. Added fresh sage to the pan sauce. A full cup of boiling water felt a little excessive so I'd reduce it to half or 3/4 next time, but the chicken was moist and flavorful, with crispy skin.

If you'd read Merrill's response to Malerie before commenting so rudely, you would know that Merrill forgot to mention the enameled part and after Malerie's question, she corrected the recipe. Take it easy.

I love roast chicken and I used this method EXCEPT I cook it vertical on my ceramic roaster. Never a soggy side, crispy skin all around and such a juicy bird. My rule of thumb has always been 15 minutes/pound plus 15 minutes for the cook at 350. No need to smoke you out of house and home to get a crispy skin.

Made this for dinner...skipped the Olive oil and used butter. Rubbed about 3TBS butter mixed with thyme under the skin and a bit over the top, salted it and chucked it in a cast iron pan with some russet spuds cut into spears. There was some smoke, but I turned down the heat after 35 minutes, and cooked for an extra 15-20 mins. Was delish! Oh, and I tucked 2 small lemons (cut in halves) inside for flavor & moistened.

I just made this sauce for dinner to serve with Zuni roast chicken, basically the same recipe roasted at 450-475F with a 3 day dry brine. It's A-mazing! I also made gravy and it wasn't touched. This sauce will definitely be showing up on the table pretty often. Thanks! So simple, classic and delicious.

A universe. I was skeptical too but the Zuni chicken method is the best roast chicken I've ever had. Here's a link to the recipe which is usually served with an equally delicious bread salad. It's a dry brine - 3/4 tsp per lb of chicken on the skin, let sit uncovered in the fridge for 1 to 3 days but I try to do at least 2 days.

It looks like some people are having this turn out excellently and some are having a splatter fest in the oven. I wonder what is happening? I wonder if the splatterfests are using chicken where perhaps the skin is not fully intact??? Have any of you splatterfest experiencers done any forensics on what might have happened? The Zuni method described elsewhere also makes note of visually monitoring the bird and turning the oven down if it gets too intense.

Burns - my guess is that the quantity of oil is to blame. I had no problems, and a delightful result, but I didn't use 1/3 cup of oil - I only used what I needed to coat interior and exterior of the bird. Excess would pool in the bottom of the pan and wind up splattering and smoking.

I made this tonight for Sunday supper. I had 4.75 pound organic chicken. It roasted for 50 minutes in a cast iron pan and it came out perfectly. Very juicy with crisp skin. Instead of water I used organic chicken stock. Served with brown rice and roasted butternut squash. Everyone loved it. The pan sauce made it! Lovely recipe. Thanks for sharing.

This is just what happens when you cook chickens like this. When I cook a small chicken using the Zuni method - with no added fat - I still get fat spatterings in my oven. Honestly, the most you can do is line whatever you can with aluminum foil, which still won't prevent what's coming off the very top of the bird. You can even line the rack the bird is on with aluminum foil, and have it come up in a kind of square "U" shape around the sides of your oven to help a little. I usually just go ahead and run the self-clean function on my oven for two hours or while we're sleeping that night if it's really bad.

I've now made this recipe twice. The result is absolutely first-rate and I'm so pleased to have found it. This is my query: The whole family (including the cat) is bothered by the other results -- a house full of fumes (that overhead fans can barely ameliorate) and an oven that's so grimy afterwards a full clean is required. It's a real stinker all the way around. I'd be so keen to hear any advice about this. Normally I'd put some water in the pan; but I realize the whole point is to keep the oven closed and to dry the chicken out. Thoughts?

Made this last night and it was really tender and juicy with a nice crisp skin. Roasted at 450 to avoid too much smoke and only had to add about ten minutes cooking time. Didn't even fool with the pan gravy - though I'm sure it's great - but threw some squash underneath it to roast at the same time. Good, quick, easy dinner!

I'm making this right now. I've never roasted a chicken in a cast iron skillet, and I've never cooked such a beautiful chicken. Also, just after I added the butter and before I added the garlic and herbs I scraped up some brown bits to feed to my husband. We are not having marital problems but if we ever do the brown bits alone will solve them. Worth every bit of smoke filling the house (of which only one window is screened, to add to the great landlord stories.)

I'm just an amateur, but I've always wondered about this extensive salting of a chicken. I would have thought a chicken's skin is fairly impermeable to salt. And there's a membrane on the inside of the cavity that looks pretty nonporous to me. I'm always haunted by the idea that most of that salt winds up in the juices in the pan. Which is great if you throw those vegetables in. Anyway, I just wondered if anyone knew any thoughtful research about this.

Extensive salting of a chicken is perhaps the best way to make it super juicy. I know what you're saying about it all going into the juices in the pan, but it doesn't. I'm not sure of the exact science, but the way it was explained to me was this: You heavily salt your whole, skin-on chicken (3/4 teaspoon per pound) after patting it dry, loosely wrap it with with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2-3 days depending on the size (2 days for a 2-3lb, 3 days for a 4-5lb), and what happens is the salt initially draws out all the moisture of the chicken, but then because it's still sitting on there so long, it infuses the moisture back into it, along with the "salty" flavor AND any herbs you've chosen to sprinkle on the skin or tuck under it. That being said, in my opinion, that's one of the reasons your pan juices aren't just pure salt - a lot of it has been "infused" per say into the chicken itself.

I was really curious about Keller's recipe so I looked it up - http://www.simplyrecipes... . Its similar - but also different. There is a lot of focus on trussing up the chicken - and I really love the idea of setting it on a bed of roasting vegetables! The sauce here though really makes a difference. Its really interesting to see how a recipe develops through time and practice with many eyes on it, constantly tweaking and improving it. It leaves me curious how effective or not is it to dry brine it for an hour as Ruhlman suggests in Twenty (Really its the same recipe with this step the only difference) I also have to thank A&M for your great 'how to carve a chicken' video. I've been waylaid all these years by the Norman Rockwellish image of a knife thinly slicing through the top layer of breast - as a first cut. How silly. http://food52.com/blog...

Made this last night with mashed potatoes and snap peas - a perfect Sunday supper. I used a cast-iron skillet for a 3lb bird, and it was perfectly crisp and finished after 45 minutes. For those of you, like me, living in small apartments with less-than-clean ovens, you probably will want to disable the smoke alarm, particularly if your landlord has, like mine, very thoughtfully installed it DIRECTLY ABOVE THE OVEN.

The pan sauce is delicious, but the chicken itself is so crispy and tender that the sauce turned out to be gilding the lily (though we still went through plenty of it, so maybe not). Next time I would probably pour off a bit of the fat (there was quite a lot in the skillet) and reduce it a little more (I got impatient because the chicken smelled so delicious). This is absolutely my new go-to roast chicken recipe, with or without the sauce.

Thomas Keller's roast chicken is a favorite at our house. As he recommends, we leave it in the oven and don't touch it for 45 minutes. We crank up the range hood (admittedly, it's almost commercial quality), and take the dogs for a long walk. Voila! It's about ready when we get back! Can't wait to try the sauce!

This is great for a commercial kitchen however, most home stoves can't accommodate this temperature without smoke from the spatters and major oven clean up. I have tried roasting chickens at this temperature and it hasn't turned out well. Is there anyway this recipe can be modified?

Any way to keep most of the fat out of the sauce? There's always a lot of fat left in the roasting pan. How about pouring it off first and just working with the brown bits, wine & water? Would that work?

I've done Keller's method, and you MUST start with an impeccably clean oven. We do ours in the gas grill (has thermometer and lid) Instead. It really cuts down on the mess in the oven and heat in the house